Find and advance the hottest new research in your field, step-by-step

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Keeping up with breakthrough research is no easy feat. Helping to advance that breakthrough research is even harder – especially if you’re a new academic. Luckily, it doesn’t always need to involve years in the lab. The latest Research Fronts report gives you quick insight into hot and emerging research heating up across the scientific landscape. We share the papers contributing to this report, as well as advice on why you should get involved and how.

Where to find cutting-edge research

The research ecosystem is a sprawling, ever-changing landscape. New discoveries happen every day, many of them in places you would least expect.

Knowing where the action is – and where the action will come from – provides a distinct advantage for researchers. It can help you understand the various moving parts of a scientific issue, enhance serendipitous discovery and uncover new and exciting opportunities for research.

Researchers often tell us how peer review helps with this. They use reviewing to keep abreast of cutting-edge research and, in addition to improving the quality of the paper, they say it helps to spark new ideas and approaches for their own projects.

Since a diverse array of research might not always land in your inbox and time is a precious commodity, we wanted to share an exciting report that gives you quick insight into new research heating up across the scientific landscape.

Following citation trails

At the end of 2019, Clarivate Analytics and Chinese Academy of Sciences co-released their annual report Research Fronts 2019 to identify the hottest and emerging specialty areas in scientific research from 2013 to 2018.

The methodology used in the report was developed in the 1970s by the Institute for Scientific Information and still stands strong today. Cumulatively, and over time, citations in research leave a trail that highlights progress and advancements across a range of fields. By regularly tracking these citations and unpacking the patterns and groupings of how papers are cited – in particular, clusters of papers that are frequently cited together – “Research Fronts” take shape.

These data that make up research fronts reveal links among researchers working on related threads of scientific inquiry, even if the researchers’ backgrounds might not suggest that they belong to the same field or discipline.

Such dynamic research areas make for a must-read report, highlighting the places where traditional disciplines may have blended together and new, diverse channels of investigation have emerged.

Getting involved in breakthrough research

“The most rewarding reviews to carry out are those which challenge my own preconceptions and theories”

Jeremy Bland, Neurophysiologist and honorary lecturer at King’s College London

We mentioned earlier that peer review is a fantastic way to keep up-to-date with cutting edge research in your field. The thing is, this benefit isn’t restricted to the traditional pre-publication peer review model – it also applies to post-publication peer review.

Post-publication peer review supports and shapes research in an open and transparent way, and is one of the most meaningful ways to accelerate scientific discourse after publication.

When used effectively, for example, post-publication peer review enables researchers to edit or update a study with new data in real time, helping to deliver trustworthy research to the world, faster.

This can bring forth immensely powerful results, especially when it’s used to advance papers in hot and emerging fields of research…

Advancing new research on Publons

With the above in mind, we’ve provided some of the hot and emerging research fronts from 2019 that contributed to the findings in the latest Research Fronts report.

You’ll find these papers below, waiting for you to read and create your post-publication peer review on Publons.

To add a post-publication peer review on Publons, simply follow these steps:

Click on any paper that interests you below

Click the button, “Add Review” under the “Contribute” section

You’ll be taken to your Private Dashboard. From there, select “post-publication review”

Write your review in the content box provided at the bottom of the screen

Select your display preferences

Click “Submit review”

You can also Score any of the papers below in terms of Quality and Significance. Scoring offers quick insight into how the experts (researchers in the peer review community) rate a manuscript. “Quality” is intended to be a measure of the paper’s methodology and rigor, while “Significance” is intended to denote novelty as well as relevance to its field and journal.

To Score a paper:

Click on any paper that interests you below

Click the button, “Score Paper” under the “Contribute” section

A final note for early-career researchers

Want to review but have never been asked? Or are you keen to improve your peer review skills by interacting with new, bold research? Here are a few reasons why post-publication peer review is a practical way to build your confidence in review. It offers:

New research to learn from and critique

A way to showcase your skills and expertise in your field

A chance to connect with researchers in your line of work

Insight into how other researchers are looking at and learning from new research

Hot and emerging research fronts:

You can learn more about the methodology used to select these hot and emerging research fronts here. And if you want to access the full text of the papers below, be sure to download Kopernio for one-click access to full-text research papers.

Agricultural, plant and animal sciences

Hot research front: The jasmonate signaling mechanism for regulation of plant growth and Defense